


A Thousand Hugs

by Luz



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Everyone Loves Gansey, Gen, Mid-Canon, Panic Attacks, Pillow & Blanket Forts, Platonic Cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 11:23:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7506364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luz/pseuds/Luz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The power goes out while the gang is having a movie night at Monmouth and Gansey reacts poorly. Luckily he has a pretty good set of friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand Hugs

**Author's Note:**

> *long suffering sigh* yeah the title is from the song fireflies...go screw yourselves...

Sometimes when they were flipping through daguerreotypes in the basement of the Henrietta library or consulting an EMF reader in the middle of an overgrown field it was hard to remember that they were still in high school.

Other times when Gansey was recognized by a gaggle of rowers while he was buying a Slurpee or Blue had to do her pre-calculus homework in the Pig on the way to Cabeswater they didn’t feel as though they were very different from their classmates at all.

The movie nights they’d gotten into the habit of holding at Monmouth were one of those times. It almost felt like a guilty pleasure - to rent a blockbuster at the faded Family Video, strew themselves across the floor with pillows and blankets, and not talk about Welsh kings or magic for a few hours. They loved it. Gansey had even procured a couch big enough to seat all of them for these occasions. 

That night, the movie was Jaws, the couch was full, and the weather was atrocious. Rain pelted outside with an occasional moody rumble of thunder that assured more to come. They were so wrapped in the movie and each other that no one paid much attention to it until a flash of lightning illuminated the face of windows that made up one wall of the room.

“Storm’s getting bad,” Adam remarked. “Hope the power doesn’t-“

With a sound like the death knell of a brontosaurus, every light in the warehouse cut out at once. The television flickered abruptly to black. 

“God _damn_ it, Parrish.” Ronan’s acerbic voice cut through the sudden darkness. “Your fault. Jinxed it.”

“Ghostly!” Noah crowed. 

“Typical HEPCO,” Adam said wryly. His accent tended to creep back into his voice on movie nights, and for once he didn’t seem self conscious over it. 

“Hope no one was on the call in line!” Blue said. “Last time there was an outage someone was in the middle of describing all the worst qualities of his ex-wife. He though Orla hung up on him. We almost got sued.”

Ronan snickered. “Will all parties in the case of Hopeless Divorcee v. Separatist Coven please enter the courtroom?”

Blue reached to smack him, scraping over Noah in the process. His affronted noise was drowned out by a great crack of thunder.

“Sounds like it isn’t settling down any time soon,” Adam said, and they fell quiet to listen to the howling wind. Almost simultaneously, they each realized that a voice had been completely absent from their blind conversation.  
`  
“Gansey?” Ronan said sharply.

Silence. Blue fumbled with the flashlight on her phone, beam swinging wildly through the dark until it landed on the couch.

In the weak light Gansey looked glazed over. “I - I don’t feel well,” he said. His voice was flat and he sounded like he was on autopilot. “I - the dark.” 

Ronan swore quietly and before any of them could react he was out the door, taking the steps two at a time as he descended. Blue stared in disbelief, Adam sneered, and Noah promptly flickered out. Gansey took an audible breath.

Immediately Blue went to him on the couch, taking his hand. “Gansey,” she said firmly. “We’re right here, okay? The power’s going to come back on soon.” She turned around. “Adam, are there any candles around here.” It was a statement, not a request.

Adam bit his lip, suddenly feeling completely inadequate. He was glad Blue was so collected. “I don’t - I’ll go look.”

“Adam,” Gansey wavered. “Cupboard under the sink. Maybe.”

Adam’s search produced a handful of dusty tea lights and one squat mustard yellow candle that smelled suspiciously herbal. He found a book of matches in the mess on one of the counters and brought everything back to the couch.

The light from the candles was weak and flickering, but it interrupted the otherwise cavernous darkness of the room. Adam was hovering, tapping away on Gansey’s phone, fingers unpracticed but urgent on the screen. “God, where the hell could Ronan be? He’s ignoring his texts.” He sounded frustrated with himself for some reason. Blue reached out and smoothed a thumb over the top of his hand. He caught her eye, grateful for the silent reminder that he needed to stay levelheaded. He set the phone down and sat on Gansey’s other side.

“Hey, tiger,” he said, and the shadow of a smile flitted over Gansey’s mouth. 

“I’m okay,” he said, but his voice was thin. Adam put a hand on his shoulder, knowing that physical contact helped Gansey stay anchored, though he was usually too polite to request it. Thunder shattered outside and he felt Gansey tense. They sat in silence. Gansey didn’t cry, but he didn’t lift his head. His breathing was ragged.

The storm was loud enough that none of them heard the BMW pull into the lot, but they heard the front door slam and someone begin climbing the stairs unsteadily.

“What the hell,” Adam started. He fell speechless as the door to the second floor swung open to reveal a prodigious amount of light. 

Ronan, standing glorious and triumphant and dripping wet in the doorway, was surrounded by blindingly bright masses of light suspended in midair. As they squinted at him it became obvious that the clouds were made up of the not-quite-fireflies that appeared at the Barns in the evenings. They slowly drifted from Ronan, dispersing from his side and into the cavernous room, hundreds or thousands of them filling the space. Their gently pulsing light became softer, rendering the space dreamlike.

Ronan grinned over at the three of them. “I thought of dreaming up more,” he explained, putting his hands in the pockets of his dripping jacket. “But I didn’t know if I’d be able to fall asleep.”

Gansey was sitting up straight, gazing at the illuminated ceiling. He lifted a hand and a light lit on him, nestling into his cupped palm. He watched it in awe. He never tired of Ronan’s dream objects.

Adam looked at Ronan with a similar type of awe, a slow smile growing on his face. “You went all the way to the Barns and back? That’s an hour drive in good weather.”

Ronan rolled his eyes. “For a Hondayota, maybe. Some of us run on higher octane.”

Adam’s smile grew broad in spite of himself and he rocked back on his heels to gaze at the lights.

“Thank you, Ronan,” Gansey said. His smile was small and tremulous, but in that moment it was worth ten of the thousand watt campaign trail smiles they saw every day. “They help.” Ronan waved a hand dismissively. Gansey’s gaze shifted over Ronan’s shoulder, and his smile got a little bigger. “Welcome back, Noah.”

Ronan whirled around. “Jesus, man, you gotta stop with that.” Noah had appeared three feet behind him. His cheek looked particularly dented in the glow of the floating lights and his eyes were shadows in his face, but he was there.

Noah glanced at the room. “Pretty cool,” he said to Ronan. 

Ronan snorted. “ _Pretty cool_? I drive all the way back from Singer’s Falls with my car lit up like a goddamn fairy mobile and I get _pretty cool_?”

“Do they do what you want?” Blue wondered, not taking her eyes off the yawning expanse of the illuminated warehouse. “I mean, can you control them?”

Ronan gave her a grin that could cut glass. A moment later, two dozen of the lights crowded around her, nestling into her hair and the froth of her skirt. Blue laughed in delight. “Badass,” she declared. “Let it be known this is the first time I’ve thought that of you, Lynch,” she added. The lights around her buzzed a little at this, as though they were irritated, but didn’t leave.

Once Gansey had his breathing under control again they sat in a loose circle under a blanket fort that Noah had expertly instructed them in constructing. A ball of light shone at their feet in the middle, bobbing slightly. During a lull in conversation, Gansey made a brief, diplomatic statement apologizing for what he called one of his _spells._ While each of them wanted to tell him that he didn’t need to apologize for having a panic attack they also knew that this was Gansey’s way of putting a definitive end to the incident, cataloguing it neatly away with a title and duration.

When the power finally creaked back on Blue and Adam were the only ones left awake. Gansey was asleep with his head pillowed in Blue’s lap. He shifted as filaments crackled in the lamps around the room but didn’t wake up. Blue stroked a gentle hand through the hair over his forehead. Nearby Ronan had assumed the position of a starfish on the floor, snoring softly. Adam’s work coveralls, which had been folded neatly after he changed out of them, were crumpled into a ball under his head. At some point, Noah had dematerialized unapologetically into one of the gloomier corners of the warehouse.

“Should we wake him up?” Blue whispered, gesturing at Gansey. In the muted light her face looked holy and protective. 

Adam shrugged. “I’m comfy,” he whispered back. In reality the uneven floor wasn’t doing any favors for his sore back but he didn’t want to move and break the spell that felt as though it had been cast over the room. He snagged a blanket from where it had been serving as one of the walls of their fort. Outside, the lights had settled. The highest of them floated lower than Adam's waist.

Blue noticed the same thing. “Because he’s asleep,” she said, nodding at Ronan. Adam nodded silently.

“You want a pillow or anything?” he asked her. She was rather pinned down. 

“I’m fine,” she replied, tipping her head back on the couch behind her. “Good night, Parrish.”

He gazed at her, wanting to thank her, bestow praise upon her for how she’d helped calm Gansey down, helped calm _him_ down when he’d needed it. If she hadn’t been there, Adam thought, things would have been worse. Things might have been so bad that even Ronan’s lights wouldn’t have been enough.

“Night, Blue,” he said instead.


End file.
